The Yellow Birds

by thecustomhouse

Yellow Birds was recommended by a dear friend of mine, and I am so glad she told me about it! It’s a story of war, but also of human frailty and brutality, how they are twisted together and tangle us in sympathy and fear.

Here its two inscriptions:

A yellow bird/With a yellow bill/Was perched upon/My windowsill/I lured him in/With a piece of bread/And then I smashed/His fucking head…

-Traditional US Army Marching Cadence

“To be ignorant of evils to come, and forgetfull of evils past, is a merciful provision in nature, whereby we digest the mixture of our few good and evil dayes, and our delivered senses not relapsing into cutting remembrances, our sorrows are not kept raw by the edge of repetitions.”